The Queen was lying on the rack, her eyes so swollen that Secaius couldn’t tell if she was awake or not. Dried blood matted the delicate, broken feathers of her face. Her breaths were slow and ragged and wet, barely lifting her chest at all.

Is that what she sounds like now? Secaius thought. How awful.

The High Magistrate of Gaiam planted himself in front of the rack, his hands behind his back. “It hurts me to see you like this, my Queen.”

She did not answer. Maybe she is asleep.

The rack was slanted so that her face was almost level with his. Where the ropes bit into her arms and legs, her feathers had been frayed away, leaving the skin bare and bloody red. A pale crack ran across her beak where Secaius’s interrogators had handled her perhaps too roughly. It did look painful.

But the strangest part was how she made him feel . . . off.

Normally, the sounds of breaking were music to his ears. Normally, he cherished the thought of all the contraptions, slowly undoing his prisoners’ resolve. He loved when they tried to hold out, when they refused to crack.

But something was missing here. Where was the thrill? It was like drinking from a bottle only to find the wine replaced with water. And something else: a shadow, growing in the back of his mind . . .

Secaius had made a promise to the Queen. Even now, his soldiers were tearing through the city block by block, searching every xeno hovel, every nook and nest. And then setting them on fire.

It was only a matter of time.

But over the past two days, Secaius had spent less time giving commands to his deputies and more time with her. Sometimes, he would pull up a chair, and sit there, and stare at her. As if she might accidentally spill her secrets in this half-waking state.

Secaius peeled off one of his gloves, letting the sweat cool in the air. He brushed his scaled fingers against her cheek. Stroking her feathers. They had been so soft, so rich when he had first brought her here. Now, the quills were brittle and prone to snapping, and the floor was covered in molted, reddish-brown feathers. It’s almost a shame.

“Sometimes, you remind me of someone,” Secaius said, gently so as not to wake her.

The Queen stirred, but her eyes did not open.

“Yes, you look like her. Almost. If it weren’t for those feathers . . .”

He could almost hear her again. Feel her fingers stroking the scales on his head. Telling him how much she loved him. You will do great things, my little Floratian. Yes, you will.

The truth was, Secaius barely knew his mother at all. As if she were nothing more than a dream he used to have.

Still stroking her feathers, he whispered to her, “Why suffer for him? You could end this all, right now. Save your city. What does the human mean to you?”

“Every . . . thing . . .”

Secaius put a hand on the table and moved his face close to hers so that his lips almost touched the top of her cracked beak. She struggled against the ropes, but they were drawn too taut to afford her much movement.

“Would you die for him?”

She lifted her beak as high as she could so that she was almost looking down on him.

“A thousand times,” she rasped. “And more.”

Good, he thought. Somehow, her unwavering dedication made him feel better. Made the shadow that clouded his mind clear away, just a little.

“And,” Secaius said, running his finger over her beak, inspecting the crack running down the bone, “how many will you let die for him? How many of your own people will burn because of your inaction?”

He did not press against her beak, though he could have. There were so few xenos like the Queen in this world. So few with such a noble strength. Yes, she really did remind him of his mother. Take away the feathers and the wings and those vile, backward legs. Paint her gooseflesh with shining scales. And there was that same sharp glint in her eye.

Like she could see right through him.

Even when Secaius’s mother had been lying on her deathbed, she would look at him that way. Even when those gods-damned surgeons had bled and cut and scraped everything they could from her with his father blind drunk in the other room. Screaming at them to shut up while he entertained this lady or that.

“You must always move forward, Floratian. You are destined for such great things. Don’t let anyone stand in your way,” his mother had told him, “especially not him.”

She was talking, of course, about his father. The most useless noble to have ever disgraced the surface of Cyre. How does someone born so rich die so poor? That useless man had only himself and all his vices to thank for that.

Pathetic. A shame upon all cyrankind.

On the night that his mother died, Secaius’s father was out at someone else’s manor, getting drunk for the feast of Lethinaean. That was the night Secaius stole his father’s gloves.

He didn’t see it as stealing. Only taking what he was owed.

Once he had the gloves, removing his father was easy. Nothing was ever difficult after that, not really.

Secaius poured a bowl of clean water and held it up to the Queen’s beak. Easing it up so she could drink from it without tilting her head.

“Help me understand,” he said as she drank. “You could be greater than all your ancestors. You could be a hero to them. What else could you possibly want?”

She gasped between gulps. And when she did speak, her voice was clearer. “Gods above . . . trees below. We are all . . . in our place.”

A prayer? Now? This was her way of spitting on reason.

So the Magistrate went for her pride. “And your people? How can you think yourself righteous when you leave them to be slaughtered in the streets like animals? What do they gain?”

“Salvation.”

Secaius’s face soured as he pulled away from her. “Salvation is mine to give, bird, and mine alone.”

An infuriating smile played at the corner of her beak. She settled back into her ropes as if she wanted to be tied to the rack.

“And vul,” she rasped. “Here come the vile and envious and those who lie easier than they breathe. Do not fault them, for they are blind to the truth. Do not hate them, for they are a sign—”

Secaius slammed a fist against the rack, causing the ropes to jump. Ryke writhed, gasping with new pain.

“You would destroy everything that your ancestors have ever worked for in the name of some—” He waved his hand, trying to think of an appropriate phrase. “Some gullshit superstition?”

He could feel his crests standing on end, covering his smooth scalp with hard, rigid spines. Secaius searched her face for some kind of clue. But all he could see were those swollen eyelids and the way she looked down at him, as if he were the one tied to the torturer’s rack.

He wanted to smash her face. He wanted to break her beak, that she might never smile again.

Remember what you came for.

Secaius inhaled deeply, stepping away from the rack. Walking in a slow, measured circle around the room.

“Look at me,” he said, gesturing at his silk and linen robes. His shoulders tall, his back as straight as a cyran pine. “Today, I am the ruler of Gaiam. And tomorrow, I will be so much more. You could be too.”

“You worship yourself,” she croaked, her voice cracking as she spoke, “but you don’t see how little there is to worship. You are nothing, and when you die, nothing you will remain.”

“And what about you, oh Coward Queen of Gaiam? How will you die?”

“Beneath the smiles of my gods.”

The High Magistrate let his face darken. He looked at his hands, at the gloves that once belonged to his father.

He who had all this power at his fingertips.

And what had he done with it? Nothing.

“You do remind me of someone, bird. Someone else. Someone with no ambition, no strength to take what must be taken.”

“I have all that I could possibly want.”

Secaius had not tolerated his father. And he would not tolerate her either.

He went over to the long bench where all the tools were laid out, clean and sharply gleaming.

His hand passed over the deadliest of them: the blunt objects, the small blades. He could almost feel each one in turn, how they would work against her warm flesh.

But she was not ready for these. She still needed coaxing.

A candle, then. Thin and as tall as his forearm, with the base fixed to a copper dish. A dozen nails were embedded in the candle, their heads sticking out of the wax like metal buttons on a shirt.

He pulled the topmost nail from the wax and rolled it around in the palm of his glove. Testing its point.

“A blessing, to be able to count the hours of your life. A pity that so few of them are left.” He dropped the nail into the copper dish with a plink! Then he pulled another from the candle. “As this candle burns down, the nails will fall. You will watch the final moments of your life melt away, Ryke. One by one.”

He dragged the nail across her beak, digging it hard against the crack in the bone. Her body lurched, and her screech was so loud it raked his ears. But Secaius could have listened to that sound all night.

He dug the nail in until her voice broke and her head sagged. Her chest fell, and Secaius could hear the gurgle in her throat. Not dead. But getting closer.

Secaius snapped off the top of the candle and lit what remained.

“While you’re here, My Queen, I want you to think about only one thing: you can stop this. At any moment, you can change the entire course of your life and the lives of all your people. All you have to do is tell me where he is.”

He waved the nail in front of her face, but her eyes were closed now. If he didn’t know better, he would think that she had passed out.

Secaius put his hand on the back of her head and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “No one is coming to save you.”

A twitch at the corner of her lips.

The damned bird was smiling.

A fire ignited inside him, turning everything hot and red. Secaius clawed his gloved hand, gripping the air in front of her face. He felt the resistance. Felt her skull starting to give under his touchless grasp.

She squirmed and made the most wretched, beautiful sound in the back of her throat.

Plink!

A nail rattled in the dish.

The redness of the world receded, as fast as it had come. Secaius inhaled and blinked a few times. Remembering where he was.

He cleared his throat, then slipped his other glove back on and departed the room, letting the door slam behind him.

One of his officers was waiting for him. He didn’t know which one. All these dullscales looked the same to him.

“When you’ve finished clearing out that miserable sewer pit they call a city, bring my Fangs down. I want them at full power when he comes.”

“Sir, the human is coming here?”

“I am certain of it,” he said, his tone filled with loathing. You idiot.

The officer’s eyes only went wider. With fear or awe, Secaius couldn’t tell and didn’t care.

Why should anyone fear this being?

If it ever came to the worst, the resolution was simple. One twist of his fingers, and the human, for all his flesh and blood, could be crushed all the same.